Neighbours oak tree is excluding light from our garden

Good idea re the hedge Philippa111

I don't think I'd offer to have it cut unless they'd refused to do anything about it. The rate that that damned things grow the OP could be paying out every year to keep it down to size..

You can ask the council about the conifer hedge, but they may want an upfront fee. A block of flats was built next door to us about 15 years ago. They planted a conifer hedge along the boundary and over the years it grew to about 40 feet high. We did ask them if they could trim it, but the response was that their ‘tree expert’ had said it was safe. We thought about asking the council to intervene, but there was an upfront fee of £750 to apply, with no guarantee of getting it back.
Luckily Storm Eunice came to our rescue, bringing down 3 of the trees in the hedge and the others were then deemed unsafe & cut down too. It did damage the fence, but the flat management company fixed that.

The trees roots are probably grown under your house by now but my son has similar problems with the lady that lives next door to him and she doesn’t have long left so they hoping when she’s gone that whoever buys it will cut it down. My daughter inlaw gets fed up collecting leaves etc that fall into their garden but it was there gardener who said about the roots etc

If the roots are obvious on your side, may you cut/dig them out? Just as far as the boundary?

Excuse me if I’m repeating info already offered, but I’ve not read all the comments.
I’m on our village parish council and have had some experience with this type of issue.
Firstly, with any type of problem like this it’s best to try and resolve it amicably with your neighbours and reach a compromise.
You do not have a right to light over your garden that I know of, but cannot be 100% sure. You do have the right to cut back branches, from an overhanging tree, right up to the boundary. As long as doing so isn’t going to cause the tree to be lopsided and be in danger of falling. Also it may be different if there’s a preservation order on it.
Regarding the hedge, the legal limit is 2m or 6.5ft, and you can ask your neighbour to trim the top to that level. Unless there is a chance of the hedge falling or causing damage to your property then your local council isn’t likely to get involved. Your best bet might be to offer to pay towards having it trimmed down, in order to keep good relations with the neighbour.
You can trim your side right up to the boundary and offer the branches back but your neighbour isn’t obliged to take them and dispose of them.
There is a lot of info available on the government website that you may find very useful.
I hope I’ve been some help.

We have a lovely house on an unadopted road, one side is 24 houses, and the opposite side is that village green that is tree-lined. When we came here, the trees were small, neat and very nicely maintained, but over the last 15 years nobody has ever attended to the trees. Trees are beautiful and we were townies so didn’t forward think. We are now both in our 70s. We spend half the year cleaning up, cherry blossom, cherries, then leaves in the autumn. They damage the paint work on our cars, they fill our gutters up and our roof has to be cleaned every year. They are so overgrown. They seem to shade our solar panels and our lounge is dark 24/7. When vehicles drive through our road, they catch the branches on the trees, which usually lands on our vehicles or driveway. We have had a smashed windscreen in the past. I have pleaded with the Parish Council to prune them back to their side of the road, without success. The law of the land says they must not cause damage to other peoples property, but trying to argue that seems impossible. We can’t move now so we just have to accept all the expense and hard work associated with these trees… maybe in our next life we will be more careful when choosing where we live.

Rather than pay someone every year, to remove the leaves from your neighbours tree, buy a leaf blower ( a one off cost) then blow the leaves back to the “ owner”

It's illegal to return the leaves to the 'owner' - or to blow them into the road or public pathways. Many of us didn't plant the trees, we inherited them. Ours have TPOs on and there's nothing we can do about them whether we like it or not. Even with a TPO it may be possible to get permission to cut the tree back, which may help a bit.

For those who are astounded that people don't know how big trees grow - we were young 'urbanites' when we bought our house and had no idea of the trees around us and no one to tell us. Nor did we inspect our neighbours' gardens. Imagine our surprise five years after moving in to see the conifers appearing on the other side of the six foot fence, and our horror as they grew into trees the height of our house.

This may interest some of you:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/20/sheffield-council-issues-apology-over-tree-felling-scandal

and this:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/tree-felling-getting-permission

We nearly lost our dogs because of a neighbour's crab apple tree that was huge and overhung our garden. It dropped masses of little apples, the two Goldies ate a couple and were VERY ILL. Sorry for graphic description but I have never seen so much blood and diarrhoea, EVERYWHERE and it took me three hours to clean the kitchen. The vet said it wasn't the crab apples themselves that hurt the dogs but some kind of virus that lives within a bacteria within the apple. (don't know the details, my husband reported back and he isn't always accurate over medical things) Both dogs were fine, the older one had to stay in overnight on a drip and it cost £1,500+ in vet's bills. The tree owners were horrified and had the tree cut back. Who knew?

For those who are astounded that people don't know how big trees grow

Was anyone astounded that people don't know how big trees grow?

I was questioning an oak tree putting on 20ft in growth in the course of 12 years... I have an oak tree growing right next to an electricity pylon (one of those very big ones). It was repainted about 10 years ago and at the same time the contractors cut back the oak so that people couldn't use it to climb onto the pylon. I'd say that it's grown only 4 or 5 ft since then, nowhere near doubling its size.

But, of course, small trees grow into big trees.

I love just about every inch of leafiness there possibly could be in this sad world. So much of it being destroyed. I’m thinking global warming issues as well as my own preferences. Our next-door-neighbour has recently started making noises about our sycamore and about his other neighbour’s tall conifer. However we were here first and our both trees were fully grown when he and his family moved in.

You should speak to a soliciter. When I lived in Aberdeen, 6ft was the limit for hedges, and check you might be able to removed tree branches that overhang your garden?

This will be a very unpopular opinion but I would love to have an oak tree next to my garden. They are magnificent trees.

BeneathTheHowlingStars

This will be a very unpopular opinion but I would love to have an oak tree next to my garden. They are magnificent trees.

No, it's not unpopular. Our neighbour has or but it's far enough away from us not to be a problem.

All large trees should be checked regularly to make sure they are safe, however. A branch crashed off another neighbour's tree across our garden once, luckily no-one was hurt and not much damage done.

one not or

Our road has large oaks at the back of the gardens. We have lived here 20 years and this year I have never seen so many acorns taken root. There was a huge fall last year.
I have been pulling them out but still haven't got them all.
So, do check if you have oaks too!

Yes, the squirrel collects them from our neighbour's tree then plants them around our garden and in my pots

We had two mature oak trees in our last garden. They were very slow growing. We lived there for over 20 years and they didn’t increase greatly in height during that time.

My house backs onto a business park with a belt of large trees and the leaves etc get blown everywhere. I dont attempt to clear them up and am not physically capable of doing so. I pay a gardener to come on every month and he goes around with one of those backpacks which suck up all the leaves and bits. I also have some leylandii which he cuts back every year.

If any of you are worried about people getting into your garden get a few cheapish cctv cameras from Amazon and site them around. You can even hide them in the trees and bushes and they will go for a few weeks without recharging. Mine are in plain site at first floor level. A while back one of mine revealed my NDN dumping rubbish on my garden so I printed the thumbnails and put the paper through his door. He was out at 6.16 next morning clearing it up as I guess he did not want me to go to the police as I threatened.

I hate neighbours and would gladly shoot them if there was a season for it.

Being a large oak tree it is probably protected by a TPO. That doesn't mean it can't be properly maintained if the owner applies for planning permission.

You have my sympathy. We have lived next to our tenant neighbours for over 40 years. They decided to plant 2 willow trees themselves. These trees are now both over 60 feet high and block out our light. The leaves cover our garden. The neighbours absolutely refuse any entry to the Landlord who have offered to pay to maintain these trees and they have let the garden and hedges overgrow alarmingly. Some people are so selfish.

The mighty oak - what a beautiful tree!
We must preserve as many healthy trees as possible. Or I will cry.

This sounds like one of those stories we read about in the local papers. Things can get heated.

I do feel sorry for your predicament. That is quite a garden patch you have there. Do you have a license to sell your food products or is this a personal endeavor? Have you approached the owners before this? The tree’s age? Who owned each property first? Maybe I’m not asking the right questions here, I’m no expert in this. Hope you all can come to a settlement without attorneys and getting into litigation.
Good luck to you!

I will always be on the tree’s side 😉
USA Gundy

I love trees but people should carefully consider how big they will grow and where they are sited.

Our garden is South facing and the previous owners planted Silver Birch and Rowan trees along one side that faces East. They don’t affect anybody. Just outside our garden on the SW Corner was a beautiful Horse Chestnut tree and generations of village kids picked its conkers ever year. It never shaded our garden or the one to the West.

I came home one afternoon about 3 years ago and it was being cut right down. My son and I were nearly in tears as it was so lovely, especially when it was in flower.

It was on the boundary of a house behind us and the owner is on our Parish Council. I checked and there was no TPO on it which I was surprised about. He told me he was concerned it might fall down in a gale but my husband knows the man he employed to fell it and he said it was a perfectly healthy tree.
The truth of it was it did shade their garden a bit and they are sun lovers but he wouldn’t admit it. The tree was there when they bought their house!

Please could I correct the common misconception that the "legal" maximum height for hedges is 2m. We had been in dispute with a neighbour whose leylandii hedge was over 25ft high and he couldn't be bothered to maintain it despite the fact that no winter sunlight ever came into our house. Eventually we had to involve our local council and pay a £480 fee to have the problem sorted. The council representative came to look at the hedge, calculate the height and also measure the distance from the hedge to our property. The council then used a formula to work out the "permissable height" of the hedge - in our case 4.5m - and our neighbour had an order served on him to get the hedge reduced to that height. It has helped but, of course, leylandii grow very rapidly and it will need doing again at some point so we shall probably have to go through the whole process again. If your local council charges a fee to do this, you will not be refunded unless you go to the Small Claims Court and try claiming it from your neighbour. Also, be aware that if you have a hedge dispute with your neighbour that has affected your reasonable enjoyment of your property, you will have to declare it if/when you sell your property. It's always best to try and resolve these matters directly with your neighbours but after 18 years our patience had run out!

Katie59

I don’t think you can do much about the tree, the Leylandii hedge really ought to be controlled if you have a word with the practice manager and negotiate action, I don’t suppose it matters much to them how high the hedge is.

Yes, I agree with this. You don't have a right to light and this tree would be very expensive to remove so it is unlikely that they would agree. Would you be willing to help with the cost?
The conifer hedge is a different matter, I believe that they are obliged to keep it to six feet or less, your local authority can advise.
The top of the garden of our last house was in the shade of an old scraggy prunus every morning, only having a short period of sun before it went into the shadow of a tall house next to us. Our original neighbours were not willing to remove it though we offered to split the cost, and it shaded their house and garden more than ours. When new neighbours arrived they really didn't care about anything but themselves.
We eventually sold the house and moved on - within the month the new next door neighbours had taken down the tree, grrrrr....